


all that's best of dark and bright

by prettydizzeed



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, M/M, like this is such fluff but that's probably a good thing bc my last ones were super angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 11:08:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11667894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettydizzeed/pseuds/prettydizzeed
Summary: The corner of Meliorn's mouth lifts. “Not a fan of Byron?”Raphael shrugs. “Don't know much of it.”“Mundanes occasionally produce something worth remembering.” The way Meliorn is looking at him is worth remembering, Raphael thinks. “That is one of my favorites,” he continues. “One of his best. ‘He walks in beauty, like the night.’”Raphael scoffs. “Doesn't sound like much of a love poem. Sounds like someone who never had to live in the dark.”





	all that's best of dark and bright

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ofEmeraldStars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofEmeraldStars/gifts).



> for Kya, who is the absolute best. their moodboards are amazing and make me feel things.

It's 1972, and there's a Seelie outside the DuMort.

He's just standing there, in the dark that has just settled against the sky, brash as all hell. His hip juts out from the otherwise placid line of his body, a hand on it, and he raises an eyebrow at Raphael.

Raphael scowls in response. “Are you here for Camille?”

The Seelie nods, then gives a slow half-smile. “Though I could be convinced to change my mind.”

Raphael rolls his eyes and scoffs slightly, already turning away to let him in.

“I trust you know the way to her room.”

The Seelie nods once and walks towards the stairs.

*

It's 1985, and Raphael is holding a cardboard box in the middle of the New York Botanical Garden, the moonlight glinting off of some decorative pool. Behind him, he hears Meliorn's laugh.

“I am sure all of that cannot be mine.”

Raphael turns to face him so Meliorn can see him roll his eyes. “I don't care, just take it. This isn't my job.”

Meliorn accepts the box and begins to rifle through it. After a minute, he looks up. “I am serious, most of this is not mine. I did not even have the opportunity to leave this much behind; we only slept together, what, perhaps two times a year for barely more than a decade—an arrangement which I do not see why she feels the need to end, and especially so dramatically.”

Raphael shrugs. “Everything Camille does is dramatic.”

Meliorn's mouth quirks into a crescent. “You are not wrong there.”

Abruptly, he begins undoing his braid, running his fingers through his hair. Raphael tries not to stare, tries to look impatient, tries to remember why this petty errand is beneath him. Meliorn succeeds in freeing the flower that had been woven into his braid and, after tossing his head so that his hair spills over his shoulders, offers it to Raphael.

“For your troubles.”

Raphael shakes his head. “There's no sunlight in the DuMort.”

Meliorn gives his small smile, just a flick of the edge of his lips, just the slightest imbalance on his face, like almost losing your footing. “It has Seelie magic. It will survive.”

“It doesn't seem fair, though, keeping it alive in the dark.”

“It is not fair to you, either.” Raphael does not say that he isn't alive. “To have no flowers in your home,” Meliorn finishes. Raphael swallows back whatever emotion is trying to form—there's a flash of his mother, on her knees in the dirt, surrounded by color, humming, and he forces that away, too—and takes it.

“Good luck figuring out whose stuff that is.” It doesn't sound entirely sarcastic. Meliorn gives a nod in response, and Raphael leaves.

He studies the flower in the moonlight outside the door of the DuMort. It's green, or at least looks green in the half-dark, and a memory in his mother's voice says _carnation_.

He tells Camille to stop making him do her dirty work, and she laughs.

*

It's the middle of a war, and Meliorn's body is a weapon.

But not in the usual way. Not in the way Camille's is, a dagger in every inch of her, elbows and nails and heels and teeth. Not in the way that girl's is, either, the one whose tongue is always moving when she looks at him, who wages biowarfare against his numb hormones.

Meliorn is focused, and fast, and he wields a sword not like he was born with it, not like it is a part of his limbs, but like he worked for it harder than these so-called Shadowhunters have worked for anything in their lives. Like he deserves it, and like he is still working to continue to deserve it.

Raphael, of course, is faster, is a bullet and a windstorm, is too quick for there to be any room for his inexperience. They aren't soldiers, anyway, but fighters, and there is an important distinction—even moreso when describing Meliorn's people, who are neither, who are warriors, who leave a trail of blood and poise in the echoes of their footfalls.

Somehow, even though Raphael moves so fast it makes his ears buzz, Meliorn is looking at him, guarding the space where he will be in the next moment.

*

It's 2009, and Raphael’s eyes are closed. He can almost pretend it's daytime, like this, with the glow of the decorative lights pressing against his eyelids, could almost pretend he's human were it not for the fact that he can count every drop of blood on the thorns of the rose bush even from here.

He isn't surprised to see Meliorn when he opens his eyes; since that first time, he always seems to show up when Raphael comes back to the botanical gardens. Raphael doesn't ask how. Or why.

“Enjoying the moonlight?” Meliorn asks, and Raphael nods once. “It's beautiful. ‘That tender light which heaven to gaudy day denies…’”

Raphael just looks at him, and the corner of Meliorn's mouth lifts. “Not a fan of Byron?”

Raphael shrugs. “Don't know much of it.”

“Mundanes occasionally produce something worth remembering.” The way Meliorn is looking at him is worth remembering, Raphael thinks. “That is one of my favorites,” he continues. “One of his best. ‘He walks in beauty, like the night.’”

Raphael scoffs. “Doesn't sound like much of a love poem. Sounds like someone who never had to live in the dark.”

Meliorn shakes his head. “Someone who knew the dark could be beautiful.” He gestures, encompassing their surroundings. “Do not mistake me, I do not appreciate much of who he was as a person, but on this…” He nods, then looks at Raphael again. “‘All that's best of dark and bright meet in his aspect and his eyes.’ He understood that there was more to it than a convenient metaphor for evil.”

His gaze is too intense, too much like a sunrise, or a promise. Raphael looks away, then walks away.

The next time Raphael sees him, Meliorn is back in Camille's bed.

*

It's 2016, and Raphael’s hands are ready for a revolt. His blood—his blood, that is not his own, that is an echo of a decision he never made—aches for it, jumps in his veins with the need to change something. So he does, and when Meliorn shows up at the Hotel, Raphael does not flinch.

“Camille isn't here,” he says. “Or, well, she is, but you can't get to her.”

His smile is like the arc of his blade, like the sharp curve of the tips of Camille's fingernails. “I know.”

Raphael keeps his arms crossed. “Then why are you here?”

Meliorn does not flinch, either. “To apologize. Just because you were not interested, that did not make it okay for me to sleep with someone you shared a building with, someone you worked for. It was…” He grimaces. “Petty.”

Raphael’s heart is a cacophony in his chest, even as it stays still. “I… You thought I wasn't interested?”

Meliorn stares at him. “I recited poetry to you and you walked away. As I said, it did not give me the right to retaliate like that, and I was wrong.”

“You… you were interested.”

“I believe I have been flirting with you for forty-four years, Raphael. Yes.”

*

It's the middle of the night, and there's a Seelie outside the DuMort.

“My sleep schedule is irreparably damaged,” Meliorn says, and Raphael laughs.

“That mean you're going to fall asleep on me again?”

Meliorn huffs, but walks in, and settles his head on Raphael’s shoulder when they get to the couch.

“I looked up that poem, you know. Magnus had a book.” Meliorn just raises an eyebrow. “It was about a girl.”

Meliorn smiles, fully, with both sides of his face, with all of his body. “The rest of it fit. ‘The nameless grace which waves in every raven tress…’” He lifts a hand to Raphael's hair.

“Yeah, well. Two can play at altering centuries-old poetry to serve their own purposes.”

Meliorn's eyebrow lifts. “Mm?”

Raphael looks at him. “Don't laugh.”

He nods, and Raphael takes a breath.

“My boyfriend's eyes are nothing like the sun…”

**Author's Note:**

> the title and the lines Meliorn quotes are from "She Walks in Beauty" by Lord Byron. Meliorn changes the pronouns so it's Gay
> 
> the last line is a reference to "Sonnet 130 (My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun)" by Shakespeare
> 
> green carnations have been a symbol of homosexuality/gay love ever since they were popularized by Oscar Wilde
> 
> I'm on tumblr @basilhallward and love to talk about poetry and how much I love these two!


End file.
